We knew that schools were having a tough time hanging on to young teachers, but in a thoughful post on the difficulties of new educators, Mr. Lawrence shows just how desperate the situation can be:
I know one young teacher (23?) who's actually trying to get pregnant just so she can get some time off. I know another who I see around town—and gives me plenty of information—and is trying to get into grad. school full-time just so she can quit teaching.
Mr. Lawrence believes that part of the reason for young teachers’ unhappiness is that they “leave college with an idealized vision of the classroom"—a surefire recipe for disillusionment. He postulates that it’s much better to go in, like he did, “with a kind of bemused detachment.”
The question is how to work “bemused detachment” into the ed school curriculum.
